[HN Gopher] Understanding the make-buy question in a growing Mar...
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Understanding the make-buy question in a growing Mars city
Author : _Microft
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-07-17 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
| golemiprague wrote:
| akira2501 wrote:
| Would be far more interesting if he considered the local labor
| market and how that's going to interact with all of this. I'd
| also like to know why he thinks the GDP per capital will be 10x
| higher on Mars, or where the "virtually unlimited" amount of
| supplies will actually be stored. There's a massive difference
| between "just in time" production and "stockpile" production.
|
| This seems to view the problem down one dimension, and I don't
| find the analysis particularly satisfying or complete.
| blamestross wrote:
| As long as the contents don't mind being in vacuum, a mylar bag
| will last a long time just sitting in a field on Mars. No not
| much 02 to oxidize things, not even enough air for wind to
| cause dust abrasion. As much as I love "The Martian", once you
| get there and pay the prices of setting up shop it is likely to
| be very stable. Daily and seasonal thermal shock will be the
| primary force of erosion.
|
| Dead planets are nice that way.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _why he thinks the GDP per capital will be 10x higher_
|
| We'll, it's all somewhat pie in the sky predictions. But I
| don't think that's intended as an assumption, but rather an
| argued outcome predicted by the other assumptions and mechanics
| of his model (annual tonnes-per-capita of consumption of
| various classes of goods, $/T, etc).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| What was the GDP/capita of the early colonies relative to their
| source populations? An order of magnitude wouldn't surprise me
| given the initial and ongoing selection pressure.
| grogers wrote:
| > Alternatively, shipping costs could fall to $10/kg. This would
| require several large miracles
|
| Come on, at $10/kg it'd be cheaper to send something to Mars than
| to mail it across town. Even $10,000/kg would require many
| miracles...
| Nomentatus wrote:
| "Import replacement" is the proper term in economics. It comes
| from Jane Jacobs.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_replacement
| Comevius wrote:
| The hard part would be finding a way how to synthetize all the
| chemicals we need without oil. I imagine that would require a
| vast amount of energy.
| mikewarot wrote:
| The atmosphere there provides all the carbon, oxygen and
| nitrogen you need, hydrogen (from water) is the thing in short
| supply at present.
|
| If you can synthesize methane there, you should be able to make
| longer chains and polymers with the right application of
| chemistry. One thing for sure, you'd never just burn
| fuel/oxygen together instead of using fuel cells, batteries and
| solar.
|
| Nuclear would be a good power source if cooling isn't
| impractical.
| vardump wrote:
| Developing Mars industry and economy will almost certainly lead
| to better ways of doing things on the Earth.
|
| Necessity is the mother of invention.
| eesmith wrote:
| Developing a negative carbon emission industry and economy will
| almost certainly lead to better ways of doing things on the
| Earth.
|
| Which is cheaper? Which has higher certainty?
| _Microft wrote:
| You might be happy to hear that the author of the article
| founded a company (Terraform Industries) that is working on
| making carbon sequestration and synthetic fuels economically
| viable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Which has higher certainty?_
|
| This one's easy: Mars.
|
| There is limited evidence large populations are willing to
| incur pain to solve the climate crisis. To the degree money
| is spent, it's politicised and inefficient. The necessity of
| survival simply isn't there here. It would be on Mars.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd word it as "Developing negative carbon emission industry
| and economy on Earth will almost certainly lead to better
| ways of doing things on the Mars" as in the two questions
| aren't different enough to phrase them as a "this one" or
| "that one". Solving one without solving at least a
| significant portion of the other doesn't seem possible and I
| don't see the desire for either shrinking as time goes on.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Personally I would rather see that we quit the rocket stuff and
| focus on real problems. Playing with rockets serves the
| entertainment needs of billionaires and maybe the tech bros on
| HN, but serves no other purpose.
|
| Starlink does come to mind, but that need can be served cheaper
| and more effectively if we would not be so capitalistic and spend
| a bit less on military.
|
| Speaking of purpose, at times it feels to me that the space thing
| is the only thing that gives the audience a higher meaning. But
| it seems so desperately hollow.
|
| It seems so gratuitous that billions are spent on nothing,
| whereas some very serious issues here down on earth are going out
| of control.
|
| But let's keep dreaming and fantasizing about Mars. I keep my
| focus on the disintegration of society by the people who finance
| this rocket stuff.
| vessenes wrote:
| Couple thoughts: First, I would gently suggest that, while it
| is easy to complain, it is hard to build - if you are into
| spending energy on humanity's current plight, 'focusing on
| disintegration of society' is going to be a full and complete
| waste of your time, and of no benefit to the rest of us - I'd
| encourage you to do the much harder (and often riskier/scarier)
| thing of figuring out what you might do to improve things.
| Probably won't look like what Elon does, but it's a big world!
|
| Second, counterpoint on Starlink. Starlink is actually pretty
| amazing - it, at scale, will provide global relatively low-ping
| pervasive broadband internet EVERYWHERE. Without any ground-
| based deployments. Logistics in much of the world are
| prohibitively difficult to even get strung-out microwave
| repeaters into places humans live, much less 30-100ms
| broadband. Seriously, Starlink is amazing. While I agree that
| military budgets could often be better repurposed for the good
| of humanity, I'm not sure that even the US military budget
| could blanket the earth with broadband in any other way than
| this -- politics plus logistics make it seem impossible to me.
|
| Anyway, I personally think the world could do with a lot more
| crazy dreamers building things right now!
|
| (Sent over Comcast)
| louwrentius wrote:
| These crazy dreamers are building shit that destroys our
| societies so I gently suggest they stop.
| dqpb wrote:
| I'm very interested to hear what you spend your time working
| on.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Nothing as polluting as rockets (If people make it personal
| you know you struck a nerve)
| twic wrote:
| Phil Metzger is also working on Mars city economics:
| https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1548465323770200065
|
| So far, i am not convinced by either of these analysis, so i hope
| they and others keep working on them.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I think a model of economics which doesn't ignore the huge
| value inherent in the fossil fuels we're burning, and can
| account for both energy and currency, would go a long way to
| better understanding the Earth economy, as well as giving
| better predictions of the Mars economy.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unless I've missed something, the SpaceX estimates this seems to
| be based on miss the rather basic fact that the energy/time (and
| presumably economic) cost of Mars trips varies depending on the
| synodic cycle.
|
| It's never just point and shoot.
|
| So the current SpaceX estimates are going to be for the most
| efficient and cheapest trajectories.
|
| If you want to ignore the synodic cycle and run missions every
| day for years, the costs are going to be _much_ higher.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Is it possible for a mission starting at T1, to arrive later
| than a mission starting at T2, where T1 < T2 due to the sheer
| speed w/ which the planets are moving?
| bombcar wrote:
| Yes, and I believe this has already happened with some of the
| various probes sent out to the planets.
|
| Voyager 1 launched after Voyager 2 and overtook it; both
| overtook earlier probes to leave the solar system.
| [deleted]
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